Deadly Toys

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-Read the excerpt below from HonestReporting.com's Nov. 8 entry "Deadly Toys".-Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.

As HonestReporting has repeatedly stated, pictures are central aspects of news stories. The decision of which photograph should accompany a report is an editorial matter of tremendous importance. It can completely change the way an textual story is understood by the reader.

On Saturday (Nov. 5), a Palestinian child playing with a replica of an M-16 assault rifle in Jenin was mistakenly shot and killed during a firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists. …

The New York Times provides greater detail:Soldiers noticed what they thought was an armed gunman standing about 130 yards away, and opened fire, hitting the target, which turned out to be the boy, the army said. He was evacuated by the Palestinian Red Crescent, and when the Israeli soldiers “approached the spot, they found the weapon which the Palestinian was holding and discovered it to be a plastic gun,” an Israeli Army statement said.

Obviously, a soldier being under fire from multiple directions 130 yards away could easily mistake a plastic replica for a real gun. From the [first set of] pictures [posted]… one could easily understand how the boy could be confused for one of the gunmen.

Most media outlets, such as BBC , Boston Globe and Kansas City Star, decided to accompany the story with pictures [second set, scroll down] of the grieving mother or the child’s body.

These photos, while eliciting sympathy for the loss, fail to illustrate how this tragedy occurred. The journalists have left many questions unasked in this incident…

Certainly the death of any child is a tragedy. Yet it is the responsibility of journalists reporting on the incident and editors selecting photographs to bring all contextual material – visual or otherwise – to accurately reflect what really happened.(For the complete writeup “Deadly Toys”, go to HonestReporting.com.)

Questions

Which type of bias best describes the the excerpt below?

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers.

Answer(s)

Spin

Identifying Media Bias

To accurately identify different types of bias, you should be aware of the issues of the day, and the liberal and conservative perspectives on each issue. (See our chart “Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs”)

Types of Media Bias:

Omission – leaving one side out of an
article or a series of articles over a
period of time... (read more)

Selection of Sources – including
more sources that support one view
over another... (read more)

Story Selection – a pattern of
highlighting news stories that support
one side of an issue over another...
(read more)

Placement – the location in the paper
or article where a story or event is
printed; a pattern of placing news
stories so as to downplay information
supportive of one side... (read more)

Labeling – comes in two forms:
1. Tagging of person from one party
or group with extreme labels while
leaving the other side unlabeled or
with more mild labels.
2. A reporter not only fails to identify
a liberal or conservative as such, but
also describes the person or group
with positive labels, such as “an
expert” or “independent consumer
group”... (read more)

Spin – occurs when the story has only
one interpretation of an event or
policy, to the exclusion of the other.
Spin involves tone- a reporter’s
subjective comments about objective
facts... (read more)